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Quails, Compote of

Quails cooked with bacon, mushrooms, onions, and veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Quails, Compote of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the claws and entrails from the quails, making a small opening.

  2. Truss the quails with their legs inward.

  3. Blanch the bacon pieces to remove salt.

  4. Fry the bacon pieces in butter until light brown.

  5. Remove the bacon from the pan.

Cook the sauce

  1. Fry the quails until they are light brown.

  2. Make a roux and moisten it with a ladleful of veal gravy.

  3. Add parsley, green onions, small white onions, and mushrooms to the roux.

  4. Remove the quails from the stewpan.

  5. Let the bacon stew until fully cooked.

  6. Skim the sauce.

  7. Strain the sauce over the quails.

Serve

  1. Serve the quails hot with bacon, mushrooms, and small onions.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quails
Main protein that browns in butter, developing savoury flavour on the surface.
Bacon
Renders fat and salty, smoky flavour into the butter and the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries heat for browning the quails and bacon and adds richness.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they cook.
Veal gravy
Liquid base that gives the sauce body and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Moisten the roux with gravy. Adding the liquid to a hot roux in measured amounts, stirring as it goes, lets the starch swell evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter, parsley, mushroom, veal):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter, parsley, mushroom, veal. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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